Encoding for Mathematics:

If the equations on the previous page don't look right, please read on.

Mathematical notation is quite difficult to represent in HTML; the language
simply doesn't have the control required to lay out complicated
expressions. There are several approaches to dealing with this problem.
One is to make iamges of all mathematical equations, but this makes for
slow-loading pages, and the iamges don't resize if you change the font size
used to display the page. A similar method uses Java applets to typeset
the mathematics on the fly.

The approach taken here is to use the Symbol font and HTML tables to lay out
the mathematics. This has the advantage of fast downloads and gives the
reader the ability to resize the mathematical equations, but has the
disadvantage of not being able to represent everything well.

In order for this method to work, you must do the following:

Enable page-specified fonts:

In Netscape 4, this can be done via the Preferences dialog box
(under the Edit menu) by selecting the
Appearance/Fonts item, and activating the checkbox for
page-specific fonts.

In Internet Explorer 4, go to the Preferences panel and select
the Web-Browser/Web-Content item, and check the "Allow page to
specify fonts" item.

Set the character encoding to MacRoman or Western(Mac) if you
are using a Macintosh:

In Netscape 4, use the View/Character-Set menu to select
MacRoman. This will be reset each time you open a new page,
so you might want to use the View/Character-Set/Set-Default
item in order to make MacRoman the default encoding.

In Internet Explorer 4, Use the View/Character-Set to select
Western (Mac). This will stay active until you change it.

Internet Explorer 4 on the Macintosh doesn't seem to handle the symbol
font correctly. We have tried to reduce the use of the Symbol font, but
there are some times when it was required. We do not know of a
work-around for this. Internet Explorer 3 does not seem to have this
problem.

Here are some examples to see if you have things set properly:

This should be the greek letter "pi":

p

This should be a square root sign:

Ö

This should be a plus with a circle around it:

Å

Mathematics Awareness Month is sponsored each year by the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics to recognize the importance of mathematics through written materials and an accompanying poster that highlight mathematical developments and applications in a particular area.